sappointed. Perhaps the doctor would say something to dispel his
illusions. Before he did anything he would submit these facts to his
cooler judgment.

The doctor read the documents attentively which he carried to him, but
not without exclamations of joy and surprise.

"You need not feel the slightest doubt!" he said, when he had finished.
"All the details agree perfectly, even those that your correspondent
omits to mention, the initials on the linen, the device engraved on the
locket, which are the same as those on the letter. My dear child, you
have found your family this time. You must telegraph immediately to your
grandfather!"

"But what shall I tell him?" asked Erik, pale with joy.

"Tell him that to-morrow you will set out by express, to go and embrace
him and your mother!"

The young captain only took time to press the hands of this excellent
man, and he ran and jumped into a cab to hasten to the telegraph office.

He left Stockholm that same day, took the railroad to Malmo on the
north-west coast of Sweden, crossed the strait in twenty minutes,
reached Copenhagen, took the express train through to Holland and
Belgium, and at Brussels the train for Paris.

On Saturday, at seven o'clock in the evening, exactly six days after Mr.
Durrien had posted his letter, he had the joy of waiting for his
grandson at the depot.

As soon as the train stopped they fell into each other's arms. They had
thought so much about each other during these last few days that they
both felt already well acquainted.

"My mother?" asked Erik.

"I have not dared to tell her, much as I was tempted to do so!" answered
Mr. Durrien.

"And she knows nothing yet?"

"She suspects something, she fears, she hopes. Since your dispatch I
have done my best to prepare her for the unheard-of joy that awaits her.
I told her of a track upon which I had been placed by a young Swedish
officer, the one whom I had met at Brest, and of whom I had often spoken
to her. She does not know, she hesitates to hope for any good news, but
this morning at breakfast I could see her watching me, and two or three
times I felt afraid that she was going to question me. One can not tell,
something might have happened to you, some other misfortune, some sudden
mischance. So I did not dine with her to-night, I made an excuse to
escape from a situation intolerable to me."

Without waiting for his baggage, they departed in the _coup_ that Mr.
Durrien had brought.